Massachusetts state officials knew the state's $1 billion insurance website – set up under the Affordable Care Act and part of the nationwide push to offer health insurance to the uninsured – was in trouble for a year before its Oct. 1, 2013, launch date, according to a new report from the Pioneer Institute, a public policy research organization.
Yet they said nothing. Worse, they continued to urge more people to sign up on the site, called Health Connect, and they duped the public and federal officials regarding the state of the work, according to the report. Also, leaders failed to hold CGI, the contractor on the project, accountable for the failings – what the report called "shoddy work."
"Instead of raising concerns about the project, they misled the public by minimizing the shortcomings of the contractor hired to build the website, asked state workers to approve shoddy work and appear to have covered up the project's abysmal progress in a presentation to federal officials," according to Josh Archambault, a senior fellow at Pioneer Institute and author of the report.
Read the report here: Whistleblowers Expose the Massachusetts Connector.
